About

MIOPS: Smartphone Controllable High Speed Camera Trigger

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MIOPS - Take your photography skills to a whole new level.

MIOPS delivers all of the features required for high-speed photography in a single unit and provides advanced features via a total integration with the smart-phone platform. It will make taking creative photos so easy that you will have the opportunity to reveal your skills with great shots. MIOPS will be your favorite photography equipment.

MIOPS is not the first trigger in the market, but it is going to be the best one. You can control MIOPS with your smart-phone over Bluetooth. You can adjust the settings using dedicated smart phone application and send them to MIOPS with a simple click on your phone.You can either use MIOPS for basic functions like high-speed and lightning photography, but you can also let him perform complex scenarios like combining different modes in the same setup. If you don't want to use a smart-phone, you can always configure MIOPS using the on-board buttons and colorful LCD screen.
MIOPS will have an upgradable firmware. It will be open to new features and upgrades will be free for life-time. You will be able to charge MIOPS with any USB charger. It will be light weight, compact sized and compatible with most of DSLR cameras.

Special thanks to Alexander Heinrichs for taking this great photo for us!

I'am excited, tell me more!

MIOPS is a standalone, small factor device which can trigger your camera or flash unit. It has three different sensors; light, sound and laser. MIOPS uses these sensors to detect external events such as lightning, fireworks, popping balloon or a laser beam cut by an obstacle, just to name a few. When such an event is detected, it triggers your camera or flash unit. MIOPS has an input port where you can hook up external sensors as well. You can for example hook up a pressure sensor and use the pressure as a triggering event. It is possible to program MIOPS so that it will take a picture whenever someone steps on your door mat. You just need to place a pressure sensor under the mat and connect it to MIOPS. There are so many different sensors out there and this means you have unlimited options as well to demonstrate your creativity with MIOPS.

MIOPS is not bigger than a credit card and only less than an inch in thickness. It is also light weight and consumes very little space in your camera bag. This is especially important if you carry your other heavy equipment in your bag. MIOPS has a colourful LCD screen and easy to use interface. You can configure your device using the on-board buttons and the screen. It gets even easier if you do this over your smart-phone. MIOPS has Bluetooth capability and with its dedicated smart-phone application you can configure MIOPS without even touching it. All of the device settings are also available on the application. On top of the basic modes and settings, the smart-phone application offers other features like cable release modes and scenario processing mode where you can define event scenarios using the combination of the different sensors. You can for example create a custom scenario like this: I want the sound mode to be activated after the sunset. You configure this using the application and the scenario is sent to MIOPS over Bluetooth connection. Afterwards, you can take your phone and go away, MIOPS will take care of the rest. It does not need the smart-phone to be close by to operate. You can store the scenarios in the application and reuse them whenever you want. You can store up to three scenarios and each of them can check against up two five different conditions measured by all of the sensors. MIOPS is Bluetooth 4.0 compatible, so it is energy efficient, has great coverage and is compatible with iOS and Android smart-phones with Bluetooth 4.0.

A mini-USB port has been added to MIOPS and it serves two important purposes. First of all, you can charge your MIOPS over this USB connection. You can also use a compatible USB charger or you can even charge it in your car just as you charge your cell phone. The rechargeable battery of MIOPS will last for days, it has energy saving features so you don't have to charge your battery very often. The second purpose it serves is the firmware upgrade. MIOPS will have an upgradeable firmware, so you can have new features with the release of new firmware. You will be able to download the new firmware and upgrade your MIOPS within a few minutes.

High speed photography can be tricky sometimes. In some cases, you will need to trigger your flash unit, not your camera. In order to cover this, MIOPS has two dedicated outputs, one is for the camera and the other one is for the flash unit. You can use them separately or at the same time. They are electrically isolated from each other, so there is no risk of a short circuit. Also, each output isolates MIOPS from your camera or flash unit optically. This means in fact there is no electrical connection between your camera and MIOPS at all. One end of the connection cable goes to the remote shutter release port of your camera and the other ends goes to MIOPS. The cables are exchangeable, you can use your MIOPS with different cameras. You don't need to buy an extra unit for your second camera. MIOPS is compatible with most of the major makes and models. You just need to get the proper cable for your other camera. The interface of the cable connection is a standard 2,5 mm jack. Extension cables are commonly available in the market if you have a different setup in your mind where the camera has to stay far away from MIOPS. The same is also valid for the flash unit connection. It uses the standard 3,5 mm connection. Some DSLR cameras do not have a remote shutter release port, instead of this they can be triggered with an IR remote controller. If you own such a camera, you are also covered. MIOPS can trigger your camera with IR connection as well.

Which Operation Modes Does MIOPS Have?

MIOPS is a high-speed camera trigger with multiple modes combined in a single box with all built-in sensors. In order to use the available modes of MIOPS, you don't need to add anything else. Everything is already in the unit and ready to use. Switching between different modes is just a matter of a few clicks and it happens in seconds. It has basically six different modes, let's see them all.

LIGHTNING

Even this mode is called lightning, there is actually so much more about it. Lightning is only one of the events that MIOPS can detect with its light sensor. When the lightning strikes, MIOPS detects in a few nanoseconds and triggers your camera. There is virtually no delay other than the lag time of the camera. MIOPS is well fast enough to capture bolts which stay visible for about 100 milliseconds. You don't need to keep your finger on the shutter release button without knowing when it is going to strike again. MIOPS will detect it and it will help you take the perfect picture. You can adjust the sensitivity of MIOPS in this mode. If you want to capture the biggest bolts only, you can set it to low sensitivity. If you set it to a high level sensitivity, it will even detect the smallest strikes which are usually not noticed by human eye. Fireworks is another great event to capture using MIOPS. The idea is the same with lightning strikes. You can maybe come up with other light events to be captured with MIOPS, we have only named two of them.

Special thanks to Bryan Snider for taking this great photo for us!

LASER

MIOPS can detect laser beams as well and they make the detection of so many events possible. The idea is very simple. If the laser beam is broken, then there must be something happened. And most of the time something happens in milliseconds, but it is not a big deal for MIOPS. The laser beam is so thin, even a water drop can break it. This is how MIOPS detects that the water drop is falling down and then it triggers the camera at the perfect time. This is almost impossible to do with human reflexes. Laser mode can also be used to detect the presence of people, animals or anything bigger than a water drop. This means you detect almost anything. One of the most common uses would be a photo trap. You know a wild animal is in the area and you want to take a picture of it. You never know when it will be coming back, but you don't need to. You can set up a laser source and MIOPS so that the laser beam will be broken when the animal walks through the beam and MIOPS will trigger the camera at that moment, or better said whenever you want it to be triggered. You can add some delay to the process. MIOPS can also turn your camera into a surveillance device. If an intruder breaks the beam, MIOPS will trigger your camera and you will have a picture on the intruder. Have a look at the following bullet!

Is it too fast? MIOPS doesn't think so!

SOUND

When it is all about high-speed photography, sound mode is the mode where things get serious. This is the essential mode to take high-speed pictures in a controlled studio environment. Even MIOPS is fast enough to take pictures of bullets or arrows, your camera is not that fast. Average DSLR camera has a lag time of about 50 milliseconds. This is too long if your objects fly by in a few milliseconds. The sound mode of MIOPS does the trick. You prepare your setup in a completely dark room and bring your camera into bulb mode. As it is completely dark, the camera will not capture anything. What is needed? Light. What delivers the light in a dark room? A flash unit. This is why MIOPS triggers your flash unit instead of your camera. The built-in microphone of MIOPS detects the sound event and triggers the flash unit. When the flash unit is fired, the camera will capture a single frame. This is how you can eliminate the lag time of the camera and capture a real high-speed picture of the object. The main parameter of sound mode is the delay. Delay is the duration starting from the sound event until the flying object gets there where you want it to be. Using the application or the device menu of MIOPS, you can set any delay between 0 ms up to 999 ms. You can also adjust the sensitivity of sound mode. It will allow you to tweak your setup per your creativity.

It is not a bottle anymore :)

TIMELAPSE

When it comes to MIOPS, it is not just sensors. In timelapse mode, MIOPS does not use any sensors but it benefits from the electronics and software to take sequential pictures within a time period with equal time difference between each of them. You can also specify the exposure of the pictures just per your wish. After you have adjusted your parameters, MIOPS will take care of the rest. You can do the adjustment on MIOPS itself or you can also use the smartphone application to configure MIOPS. You can set the interval anywhere between one second and an hour. As MIOPS has energy saving features like turning the LCD off, you can shoot timelapse photography for days without recharging. If you can supply MIOPS with an external power source, you can expect it to last for months depending on the capacity of the power source. Timelapse photographs have to be taken with great precision as it shows moving object and they will be at a different place in each picture. If the time difference between each frame is not consistent, you cannot get good result in time lapse photography. MIOPS is capable of taking the pictures with great precision no matter how long it takes to do this. And this yields to high quality timelapse videos where everything is moving around smoothly. MIOPS takes care of the difficult part and the time lapse video software does the rest. Check the following video if you are curios of how a timelapse video looks like.

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HDR

HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos look to good to be true because they are actually not. Digital processing of the same picture with different exposures is the main idea behind it. It is again done with picture processing software but it is the quality of the single pictures which makes a great HDR picture. MIOPS does here again a fantastic job by achieving highest precision and providing the best time savings. After you have specified the center exposure and step up/down numbers, MIOPS triggers your camera exactly per the settings. You don't need to do anything manually. MIOPS takes the overall control of your camera and does not stop until it gets the job done. Imagine that you had to change all the settings for each of the HDR pictures. It wouldn't be so much fun for sure. On top of that, it would take quite long time to complete all these features. MIOPS eliminates all this hassle by completing everything per your settings with zero manual involvement. It couldn't get easier.

External Port

MIOPS offers unlimited creativity not just with the built-in sensors and software but also with the capability of connecting external sensors as well. If you have a high-speed photography project in your mind which uses another type of sensor, this is not a blocker for MIOPS. MIOPS can accept signals from external sensors with the dedicated port, so you are not limited to light and sound events only. There are many different sensors in the market. Temperature, pressure and humidity sensors are only a few of them. If they are electrically compatible (which means the output signal must be between 0 and 3V) you can connect them to MIOPS. You can use the humidity sensor for example, to trigger the camera if the humidity level is above 65%, or you can hook up a pressure sensor to initiate lightning mode only if the air pressure is low. Every other sensor adds something to your creativity with MIOPS. In fact, MIOPS can actually trigger unlimited type of devices as well. The triggering mechanism of MIOPS is not limited to DSLR cameras and flash units at all. You can trigger any other device which has a trigger port like your DSLR camera. You can use it for early warning system in a farm. If MIOPS detects any lightning activity, it can trigger a siren or warning mechanism, so no live stock remains outside. This kind of usage is quite different from high speed photography, but it is possible with the versatile design of MIOPS. The next section is even more interesting.

Advanced Scenarios with the Combination of Multiple Sensors

The app brings the functionality of MIOPS to the ultimate level. On top of the basic modes (Lightning, Sound, Laser, Time Lapse, HDR and External Port) it adds a very cool feature called "Scenario". What does this mean? In this mode you can create a custom scenario with up to five different steps. In each step, MIOPS can use either the same or a different sensor. The result will be a totally unique set-up with sequential steps utilizing one or more sensors for the overall scenario. The following example will make everything clear. Let's say you are going out, but you know that there will be a thunderstorm tonight. You want to take lightning pictures so bad, but you have to leave. Here MIOPS is your saver with Scenario feature. You will add the following steps to your custom scenario:

* First Step: Let's say you want to start taking pictures after the sunset. In such a case you can add any amount of delay before initiating the action. You add the required delay until sunset, so MIOPS knows exactly when to start. If time is up, MIOPS will execute the second step.

* Second Step: You want to do some time lapse photography, just to see how the storm builds up. You define your timelapse parameters including interval, exposure and total period. MIOPS triggers your camera to take all of the required pictures for timelapse and when it is done it will move to the third step.

* Third Step: Now it is time to start lightning photography. MIOPS is ready to capture all of the lightning strikes as it has already waited until sunset and taken all these timelapse pictures. All have been done as you were away enjoying your night. This is just an imaginary example of what you can do with the scenario mode. When we say unlimited creativity, we really mean it. MIOPS has all of the required capability and flexibility to provide this. You can store up to three different scenarios in your smart-phone. They will be ready to use instantly. You can modify them anytime if you want to do something different.

Smartphone Compatible & Bluetooth

We have added the essential features of MIOPS to the device menu, so they can be easily configured and used on the device with no need to another tool. On the other hand, the real potential of MIOPS is revealed with the smartphone application (app). The app offers many advantages and features. First of all, you can take the total control of your MIOPS with the app. Any mode and any parameter can be adjusted with the app and then you can send the settings and commands to MIOPS with a single touch over Bluetooth connection. If MIOPS is mounted on your camera or tripod, you can leave your setup as it is and control MIOPS without even touching it. You will not need to adjust your setup again, nothing will move at all. Your smartphone has a big screen and MIOPS app uses it for your good. You don't need to look at the screen of MIOPS, everything is in your smartphone. The app needs to connect to MIOPS to send the settings only, at all other times you can use your phone with no interruption. MIOPS does not require the control of the app once the settings are received. If you want to switch to another mode, just open the app, connect to MIOPS and switch to another mode. It is so easy.

Is My Camera Supported?

If your camera model doesn't exist in the following list, then please feel free to contact us!

Project Timeline

We have passed almost all of our critical milestones. Now we need your help to clear off the remaining items.

Backers Plan

We offer a flexible plan for our backers. You can back us with 3 different packages as shown below.

Risks and challenges

MIOPS is almost ready for batch production, but there are still a few things to do. They are mostly about the cosmetic design and packaging. We have some international hardware suppliers but we have done business with them before, so we know what to expect. The overall process is under our control and we are doing our best to stay within the proposed schedule.

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MIOPS BOOSTER (PREMIUM) - Get your MIOPS PREMIUM + 1 Flash Cable + 2 Camera Cables + 1 Spare Battery + 1 Laser Pointer at the first batch. So that you will have a smartphone controlled and fully functional MIOPS with special add-ons. Also be one of the limited people who have their names at the device screen instead of MIOPS logo.